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lunes, 27 de abril de 2015

Lenin, the Wall Street Journal and a task in Economics

Step
number one. Read:

“Monopoly capitalist
combines—cartels, syndicates, trusts—divide among themselves, first of all, the
whole internal market of a country, and impose their control, more or less
completely, upon the industry of that country. But under capitalism the home
market is inevitably bound up with the foreign market. Capitalism long ago
created a world market. As the export of capital increased, and as the foreign
and colonial relations and the “spheres of influence” of the big monopolist
combines expanded, things “naturally” gravitated towards an international
agreement among these combines, and towards the formation of international
cartels.” (“Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism,” by V.I. Lenin)

Step number two: Read an article in the April 27thWall Street Journalby Jonathan D. Rockoff and Ed Silverman
entitled “Pharmaceutical Companies Buy
Rivals’ Drugs, Then Jack Up the Prices”

Neither of the drugs, Nitropress or
Isuprel, was improved as a result of costly investment in lab work and human
testing, Valeant said. Nor was manufacture of the medicines shifted to an
expensive new plant. The big change: the drugs’ ownership.

“Our duty is to our shareholders and
to maximize the value” of the products that Valeant sells, said Laurie
Little, a company spokeswoman. “Sometimes pricing comes into it,
sometimes volume comes into it.”

More pharmaceutical companies are
buying drugs that they see as undervalued, then raising the prices. It is one
of a number of industry tactics, along with companies regularly upping the
prices of their own older medicines and launching new treatments at once
unheard of sums, driving up the cost of drugs.

Since 2008, branded-drug prices have
increased 127%, compared with an 11% rise in the consumer price index,
according to drug-benefits manager Express Scripts Holding Co. Needham &
Co. said in a June 2014 research note there were as many as 50% drug-price
increases during the previous 2½ years as there were in the prior decade."

Step number three: Answer the following questions.

1)Does Lenin’s article help understand the report in the Wall
Street Journal and if so in what way?

2)Why do the prices for pharmaceutical drugs undergo
such dramatic increases?

3)Is it true that giant corporations attempt to control
the markets or is that just fables invented by leftists like Lenin?

4)What is the real goal of the process of globalization?

5)Would it be useful or possible to control the process
of monopolization of production, still being carried out on a world scale?